The tablet computer revolution is just starting in school classrooms. iPads and other tablets are being used in schools all over the world. Once the initial investment in the hardware has been made a whole world of cheap or free educational materials opens up.

This site has been setup to showcase the development, during the course of 2013, of a new suite of tablet (initially iPad) oriented applications for teaching science to 11 to 18 years olds. But the aim is to go much further than the usual format of textbooks published electronically and enhanced with a few illustrations and animations. These applications will contain genuine simulations of real-world science for the students to explore. The students will be able to create their own electric circuits from scratch, experiment with springs and pendulums or mess about with lenses all in a realistic 3D environment.

Follow Tablet Science on Twitter

Then they can create graphs of their experimental results on a real-time graph plotter and answer questions on worksheets tailored to specific science curricular, starting with the UK Key Stages 3 and 4.

The First Released Simulation - Optics

The most obvious area of science education to simulate is physics. I am starting this project with a series of simulations exploring various important aspects of physics:

Optics

Vibrations and Waves

Mechanics

Electric Circuits

For each of these topics I will be creating a room, or lab, in which the user is free to play with any of the objects he/she finds in there but which also contains a book which can be used to guide them through the topic in hand. The screenshot shown here is from the work in progress on the first of these simulations - Geometrical Optics.

The Optics workbook, as shown here, is a ring binder style which can be brought to the front of the screen whenever required. At various points throughout the book there are buttons that the user can press which automatically configure the simulation to illustrate the particular principle or experiment being discussed.

Key Ideas

Some of the key ideas in the subject of Geometrical Optics are refraction, reflection, the pinhole camera and lenses.

The simulation deals with these topics by presenting the user with mathematically accurate representations of, among other things, reflecting and refracting spherical globes, refracting lenses, a pinhole camera and a working model of the human eye.

All of these objects are three dimensional and can be moved and rotated in the simulated room by the user. Whatever the user chooses to do with them, and however he/she decides to examine them, they behave just like the real thing.

Lenses and glass globes use accurate ray tracing to bend the light in exactly the right way. The user can experiment with changing their refractive index and observing the effect.

The pinhole camera and the model of the human eye accurately block all light except that which passes through the pinhole or pupil and then use ray tracing to cast an authentic image onto the screen or retina.

All of this happens in "real time". The user can move objects around and see the effects immediately.

Reflecting objects, like the globe shown here, give a vivid sense of depth, especially when picked up and moved around the room.

Learning Through Play

All of this is designed to draw the user in and make the app fun and fascinating to play with. But it is not a game - it just looks like one! The fact that all of these things are physically accurate and are accompanied by accurately written educational material means that learning naturally flows from the process of playing.

Light Rays

One of the most important educational aids in the app is the "light rays" view. In a real-life room light comes in through the windows or is emitted by light bulbs and bounces around off the walls and objects in the room illuminating everything. If an object like a pinhole camera is placed in the room some of that light enters the camera through the pinhole and forms an image. Of all the light in the room only a tiny fraction actually goes through that pinhole. Likewise, for any piece of apparatus, like a lens, only a small amount of the light that is present in the room actually enters the lens and does something interesting.

For this reason, there are two light ray modes in the app - "Relevant Rays" and "Random Rays".

Relevant Rays and Random Rays

The user can choose to show a random selection of all the light flying around in the room. Rays enter through the windows or are emitted by the ceiling light and bounce around, occasionally being reflected or refracted by an object in the room, until eventually they are absorbed and disappear. This gives the user a sense of what the light in the room is really doing, but it is not particularly good for illustrating the behaviour of lenses, pinhole cameras and things.

For this reason, the user can also choose to show only light rays that are relevant and interesting to the particular object or objects they are currently holding. The screenshot shown here is an example of the rays that are relevant to the simulated model of the human eye. It shows the two parts of the model - the eyeball section with the pupil hole in the front and the retina section - separated from each other. The only light rays being shown are those which have bounced off the far wall and happen to be heading straight for the pupil of the eye. Obviously, most of the light in the room is not doing this, but this is the light that is relevant to the working of this eye model. It illustrates the way in which light from a single point on the far wall is constrained to land on a small patch of the retina (if it was in its proper place) if it is to pass successfully through the pupil hole.

Release Timeline

I am anticipating releasing the first version of this first Tablet Science app some time this summer. If you want to keep up with progress in the development work and find out a little more about the work that goes into it, you can follow development progress on the "Development Diary" page.

I hope to gradually hone the product into something that is a useful tool for secondary school science teachers. I do not expect it to replace real-life scientific experiments - these are what science is all about! These simulations are not reality; they are extensions of theory. But I hope that, when experimentation is not practicable, they can help to bridge the gap.

I welcome any comments and suggestions, either via the Tablet Science Twitter account, the Comments sections in this website or direct to my email address: